I returned to Liberia in April of this year to conduct a rapid assessment of mental health services and interventions in New Kru Town, a drug infested ghetto outlying Monrovia. There were five reported cases of Ebola virus disease and one death.

As long as we have these issues -- lack of infrastructure, lack of education, lack of access to healthcare, lack of gender equality, and the reality of foreign-imposed restrictions -- then there is going to be another crisis further down the road.

As the state of Liberia crumbles in almost every way, Michael and Yvonne Weah and their fellow Liberians struggle on. But I'll let Mike tell you what life is now like in Monrovia, the city named for U. S. President James Monroe.

It's both astounding and embarrassing as an American to observe the grossly uninformed hysteria in this country over the transfer to highly controlled hospital isolation units in New York and Atlanta of two Americans with Ebola, while entire nations in West Africa are seemingly falling apart.

Oxfam is testing the Tiger Worm Toilets, aka the poop-eating worm toilets, with several West Point residents. But judging from the smell, the construction of a toilet wasn't working well enough to keep the community healthy.

As I started to learn more about the PUFF Festival and Gina Wong, I realized that her insistence upon the appearance of an artist from the other side of the globe for the world premier of a low budget indie rock opera art film should not come as a surprise.

Recently, 148 accomplished travelers aboard National Geographic Explorer found themselves in the historic position of being the largest group of tourists to dock in the Freeport of Monrovia, Liberia since the 1970s.

Americans rarely see photos of the dead, especially their own, in mainstream media outlets. The U.S. media has been trained to tiptoe around publishing images of American corpses, not wanting to outrage the families of dead soldiers and citizens.

Many airlines flying into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport have hired private security firms to guard passengers, cargo and aircraft rather than rely on the Kenya Airports Authority or local police for protection.

Although U.S. and Kenyan authorities said there is no immediate threat of terrorism to the airport or to airlines operating there, previous incidents have raised concerns.

Kenya has been hit with three major terrorist incidents over the last 11 years. Al-qaeda operatives bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing more than 200 people. In 2002 a car bomb exploded at a seaside hotel frequented by Israeli tourists, killing 15 people. At almost the same time, terrorists tried to shoot down a charter jet carrying Israeli tourists with a shoulder-fired missile.

The question of security at the Nairobi airport was raised again last month when Delta Air Lines abruptly canceled an inaugural flight from Atlanta to Nairobi after the Transportation Security Administration refused to sanction the route.

Aviation experts say private airport security guards are common in war zones around the world, but rare in relatively stable nations like Kenya. Still, national carrier Kenya Airways is among those using a private security firm at the Nairobi airport.